Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the structure of a brake-cooling duct, which may be coupled to an intercooler, and more particularly, to the structure of a brake-cooling duct, which may be coupled to an intercooler tank, which forms an intercooler to cool air that passes through the intercooler, thereby increasing the cooling performance of the intercooler and ensuring easier mounting thereof.
Description of Related Art
An intercooler is a device that cools air to be suctioned into an engine (before the air is supplied to the engine). Such an intercooler has been mounted in various types of vehicles since it assists an engine having a small capacity in realizing a high output.
The intercooler lowers the temperature of air to be suctioned into the engine, and correspondingly increases the density of the air, thereby increasing the engine output. Generally, the intercooler is used along with a turbo device in which exhaust gas combusted in the engine rotates a turbine to implement compression of air, and is disposed in the middle of an air movement path between the turbo device and the engine so as to cool the air, which has been heated and compressed by the turbine.
The intercooler is divided into an air cooling type in which cooling is implemented by wind induced by a vehicle (i.e. driving wind) and a water cooling type in which cooling is implemented by cooling water. Among these, the air cooling type intercooler is configured by coupling a core unit 3 and an intercooler tank 4 to each other. As illustrated in FIG. 1A, the core unit 3 is disposed on the front lower end of a radiator 2 of a front-end module 1 so as to be directly exposed to the driving wind, and the intercooler tank 4, which is connected to the turbo device and the engine to supply air that has passed through the core unit 3, is disposed on one side (or both sides) of the core unit 3.
Meanwhile, when a high-output engine disposed with the intercooler is mounted in a vehicle, there is a demand for correspondingly high braking performance. That is, in order to enhance brake performance, in a high-performance vehicle, a brake-cooling duct 5 is mounted near the intercooler tank 4 to guide the supply of the driving wind to a brake disc so as to more rapidly cool the brake disc.
The brake-cooling duct 5 is disposed at one side of and distanced from the intercooler tank 4 so that a suction hole thereof faces the front side and a discharge hole thereof faces the brake disc at the rear side thereof. As such, the brake-cooling duct 5 guides the supply of the driving wind to the brake disc so as to cool the brake disc, thereby suppressing a brake judder phenomenon and noise generation due to thermal deformation of the brake disc.
Meanwhile, since the cooling performance of the intercooler has a great effect on the output of the engine, the core unit 3 of the intercooler and the intercooler tank 4, through which the air moves, may be disposed so as to be cooled by the driving wind.
However, in consideration of limitations on the design and layout of a bumper 6 in a situation in which the suction hole of the brake-cooling duct 5 needs to be oriented to face the front side of the bumper 6, as illustrated in FIG. 1B, the area to be exposed to the driving wind may be limited. That is, although the full projected area of both the core unit 3 and the intercooler tank 4 is “A” and the full projected area of the brake-cooling duct 5 is “D”, the front surface of the bumper 6 is open only in the portion “C” and the driving wind may not enter the portion “B” in which the intercooler tank 4 is located. In addition, conventionally, the brake-cooling duct 5 and the intercooler have been individually installed, which complicates attachment of the same to a vehicle body.
The information disclosed in this Background of the Invention section is only for enhancement of understanding of the general background of the invention and may not be taken as an acknowledgement or any form of suggestion that this information forms the prior art already known to a person skilled in the art.